Unsettling claims
There is never a good time for an administration's first real scandal, but certainly the timing of the implosion of the Boston Fire Department could hardly be worse, coming as the mayor lays the groundwork for a run at a fifth term in office.
Federal investigators now want to speak with current and former firefighters and commanders, and they are likely to hear some very interesting stories. The Globe disclosed earlier this year that more than 100 firefighters have claimed career-ending injuries while temporarily filling in for supervisors, accidents of timing that boosted their pensions substantially. The FBI has also subpoenaed disability records. The fire commissioner, Roderick Fraser Jr., is on record as considering some of the claims suspicious.
Part of the backdrop for the investigation is the long-running and contentious contract negotiations between the city and the firefighters. One of the sticking points - far from the only one - is that the city would like to end the obvious scam of fill-in disabilities that result in higher payments for life.
Nevertheless, it may not be so easy for City Hall to distance itself from the burgeoning scandal. For if a culture of lax management has been a fact of life for years in the Fire Department, it remains true that Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the third-longest serving mayor in the city's history, has been thwarted in his efforts to change that culture.
The price of that failure, in sheer financial terms, has been hefty. The city paid out more than $43 million in injured-leave pay to firefighters between 2003 and 2006 - tax-free.
The alleged scam has served to boost one of the fastest-growing areas of municipal finance, pensions. But it is one thing for costs to rise because a generation of employees are retiring en masse, as is the case for schoolteachers, and quite another to pay jacked-up lifetime subsidies for people who claim they were scarred for life by moving a file cabinet or tripping in a puddle.
Yes, a puddle. That was the sad fate of a district chief who was filling in for his boss, a deputy chief, in 2002. He spent two years collecting disability - deputy chiefs dry off slowly, it appears - before retiring at a deputy chief's salary. I don't know whether he was one of the retirees who got a subpoena this week, but I certainly hope so.
The grand jury looking into this will have plenty to chew over. Aside from garden-variety fraud, the case also raised the prospects of mail fraud or wire fraud. They're going to be busy.
There is absolutely no indication that any of this involves the rest of the administration, except in terms of the records that have been requested. Still, it can hardly come as good news.
I had hoped to ask the mayor yesterday whether he thought his administration should have been able to do a better job of curbing some of the alleged abuses in the Fire Department, but his spokeswoman, Dorothy Joyce, said last night that he was unable to comment on the investigation.
It is true that he cannot comment on the details of the inquiry, but the questions are not likely to go away. And while Menino cannot be expected to discuss matters of guilt or innocence, he can and should say what he plans to do about this obviously troubled department. Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, spoke this week about a culture within the Fire Department that accepts abuses of public trust. We need to hear from the mayor about why that has been accepted for so long and what he plans to do about it.
Some are offended by any suggestion of wrongdoing among the heroes who fight fires, and they will greet this news with outrage. Most residents, however, will reserve their outrage for people who may have helped themselves to public money to which they are not entitled.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
